June 2008 Archives

I'm in Zurich at the moment; have been since Wednesday afternoon.  I worked for a couple days, and then Heather and I came and stayed with our good friends Jen and Tak in Horgen.  Switzerland is a really neat place, but it doesn't at all conform to my expectations of what it's all about.  I''d like to write more about this a little bit later.  Right now, breakfast is almost ready.  :)

It's just after 2:00 AM.  I really should be getting to bed.  But how often do I get to blog on my wedding day?

I'm excited about it.  The rehearsal went well.  The dinner went smoothly too.  My lips are chapped and sunburned, though.  They hurt pretty bad right now.  That's the bad thing about an outdoor wedding maybe.

The reason I'm up so late isn't because of nerves.  Well, maybe a little bit.  I had to give a toast today at the rehearsal dinner and I did not realize I had this obligation.  I did my best, but I knew it sucked.  It ended with a lame "to you!" (i.e., I dedicate this toast to you), and I regretted it the moment I said it.  My temporary self-loathing was validated by my sister Kelly's mocking, chipmunk-like voice "to you," - in that older sister voice that can derail your core like no other voice - and I knew it really sucked then.

So I've spent the last two hours searching the Internet for protocol on who to thank, how to thank them, and the order in which you do the thanking.  Only a social retard like me consults the wisdom of the Internet to navigate these kinds of social situations.  I've convinced myself that most people must come with a chip installed in their brain that contains all information necessary for successful social interactions.

Anyway, I think I've got something that doesn't suck too bad, when I'm called upon for the groom toast tomorrow.  At least it's prepared and there's no lame-ass "to you!" at the end.  I guess I should thank Kelly for alerting me to the fact that I should think about what I'm going to say.

But I won't.  At least not in person.  ;)

OK, this is going to be one of those blog entries that I just post and forget about, without regard to spelling or grammar or general thematic cohesion.

I really should be getting to bed.

I can't believe I'm getting married one week from today. By this time next week, Heather and I will be married.

It's surreal.

I've had lots of people - all men - ask me whether I'm nervous, or afraid, or getting cold feet or whatever. I can honestly say that I am not getting cold feet. And the only thing I'm really nervous about is whether we can get everyone - or nearly everyone - to have as good a time as possible.

Of course, I have a whole week for things to sink in. In many ways, things haven't yet. Heather says she's having the same experience.

Well, let's see where this takes us.

---

A new advance this week in machine-human relations: a computer has hurt my feelings. For the first time ever.

So the story is, at work everyone talks over Internet Relay Chat (IRC). It's really a pretty fascinating system. If you have a question or announcement, you can ask over this system, and everyone who is logged on at the time sees it. The system also records chats for employees' future reference.

It's pretty cool. It makes for a pretty quiet office sometimes, though.

Now, the VP of engineering ran a statistics script on our recent set of chats. We could see who the most prolific chatters were, sample quotes, etc. Pretty interesting.

Nearer the bottom, the statistics started to cut a little. At the top of this list was (and I'm paraphrasing):

"umbaugh asked the most questions, with 37.4% chat lines representing questions. Either umbaugh is stupid, or he asks too many questions!"

Although I was mildly embarrassed, I was also kind of thrilled that a machine was able to elicit this kind of response in me.

Of course, much of the culpability goes to the script programmer, but still.

Another observation: is this revelatory of our culture's collective notion of equating asking too many questions with stupidity? Experience tells me that this is a notion that a lot of people - particularly Americans - hold as truth. Maybe not most people, but a lot of people. Often the loudest people. And that's a shame.

It's taken me 31 years and a lot of courage to get to the point that I can ask nearly any question at any time, though I am always aware I might potentially expose some astonishingly embarrassing stupidity. But you know what? Maybe someone else had the same question. And even though I might look stupid, who cares? I will have gotten more to the bottom of whatever I was working on before I asked the question, so it's a win in the end.

It still takes effort, though.

Luckily, a lot of the pressure's off. My coworkers at Zattoo are the chillest and most down-to-earth I've had the pleasure of working with.

Anyway, this whole "that's a stupid question" thing is a cultural relic that we have to discard ASAP.

---

OK, I'm done blogging for now. I've got a lot of shit to do.

Enjoy your Sunday, everyone. Happy Father's Day!

This is cool. I was listening to a recent episode of FIR today at the gym, and Shel and Neville kept talking about this cool new application called FriendFeed. And it is cool. Here is my FriendFeed.

I have aggregated all sort of personal services here, including my Del.icio.us, GTalk status, this blog, my Twitter, Amazon wishlist, Netflix queue, my YouTube, and my Facebook. It's pretty neat. Also, as more users sign up, I can use this application to keep track of my friends who use this network. Currently that's only two people. So sign up! It's cool!

One of the concerns Neville expressed is that there seems to be a bit of a land grab in the room namespace, similar to what has happened with (and ruined) DNS by squatters. Naturally, I snapped up the zattoo room.

This past Saturday, Heather and I had the great pleasure of seeing our friend Momo performing in Jesus Christ Superstar in Brooklyn, New York. Momo played the female lead of Mary Magdelene. It was really amazing. Everyone in the cast was so talented. Naturally, Momo enchanted the audience with her singing.

If you are in the Brooklyn area next weekend (June 14, 15, and 16), tickets might still be available. Highly recommended.

Momo has also been writing and posting photographs about her experiences as a performer in JCS on her blog. Very interesting reading.

Congratulations Momo!

I've been experimenting with a new cardio playlist for the gym. It's been going pretty well. Here it is:

• Under The Bridge - Red Hot Chili Peppers - 4:26
• Hooked Up - Jamiroquai - 4:35
• Human Behavior - Björk - 4:11
• The Future - Leonard Cohen - 6:42
• Krakpot - Plastikman - 11:13
• Misirlou - Dick Dale & his Deltones - 2:29
• Spaz - Plastikman - 7:41
• Woo Hoo - The 5.6.7.8's - 1:58
• That Certain Female - Charlie Features - 3:01
• Don't Let Me Be Misunderstood - Santa Esmeralda - 10:28
• Aeroplane - Red Hot Chili Peppers - 4:47
• Calypso - Microworld - 4:33

This playlist runs for just over 66 minutes, and is suitable for a 60-minute workout (plus a 5-minute cooldown) on an elliptical machine - preferably a Life Fitness machine, if you can find one.

The theory behind this playlist is to follow a kind of bell curve. Start fairly slow and gradually rise (up to the peak around Misirlou), and then start slowing down. Microworld's Calypso, however, is a pretty fast tune. That's all right though - the Life Fitness really takes the pressure off for the cool down, and I find that it actually feels better to go relatively quickly through those last five minutes.

A lot of these songs might not seem good workout songs, but it works for me because half the battle is just trying not to be bored. Varying it up here and there really helps. A good cardio playlist, I think, needs to balance good consistent rhythm with keeping the listener intellectually engaged. At least on some level.

All this said, this playlist could use some refinements, perhaps. Some opportunity areas:

• Misirlou is a great song, but it is a pretty fast song. I find that it helps to step six times out of eight beats. This is slightly challenging, but not too bad. I find that I enjoy the challenge of trying to find a way to synch up with the beat in a different, slower way. It's kind of silly, maybe, but I feel like I'm practicing a kind of dancing.
• Another one of the songs - I think it was Don't Let Me Be Misunderstood - had the same problem, but much worse. I had to do something like eleven steps out of sixteen beats (with a synchopated re-synch step every so often). Less fun, but it was interesting for a change.
• The Plastikman songs are awesome workout songs in that they provide monolithic, consistent, aerobic-friendly rhythms. I think they're great. Unfortunately, not everyone will like them (see below).
• The transitions between songs can be a bit jarring. I'm still figuring this out, it seems. Aeroplane has a barely audible, really mellow introduction, for example. It's easy to get out of synch and lose your rhythm.

Overall, I'm pretty happy with it though. It's good to have more than one playlist - the one that I had been using (since February) has gotten pretty stale...

---

Check this out. This is the video from Plastikman's Spaz. Heather can't stand this song.

I also found another video by Plastikman. I have never heard this song before. Cool video.

Good stuff.

---

You may be asking why I wrote this article. I already wrote an article about cardio playlists a while back.

Well, the answer is that I'm a Google Analytics junkie, and a traffic whore. Check out my highest search term sets for the past three months (i.e., these are the terms that people type in the search engine to get to my blog):

1. workout playlist (246)
2. http://citymb.org/ (148)
3. cv-qualifier (147)
4. cardio songs (91)
5. cardio playlist (88)
6. gonzaldiatrez (85)
7. workout playlists (80)
8. citym (75)
9. cardio playlists (71)
10. work out playlist (59)

That's pretty incredible - six of the top ten search terms have to do with workout playlists. I feel like there's some sort of unmet market need for delivering cardio playlists or information about cardio playlists, which is pretty fascinating to me.

Perhaps you got to this site searching for cardio playlists. What is it exactly that you're looking for?

I'll keep you all apprised of the traffic patterns generated by this post.

Monday I read an article in Wired called Brain Scans as Mind Readers? Don't Believe the Hype.

This is the most interesting passage:

[A]cademic researchers and medical entrepreneurs are already trying to sell brain scanning to both patients and corporate clients. Media giant Viacom (parent of MTV and Nickelodeon) paid a reported $200,000 to the British company Neurosense to help determine ad placement by scanning subjects as they watch different TV commercials. Two US companies are developing ways to use fMRI as a lie-detecting tool. Scientists are teaming up with criminologists to try using scans to predict violent or criminal behavior. And now politicians are interested, too. Psychologist and Democratic political consultant Drew Westen, in his book The Political Brain, argues that Democrats appeal to the reason-loving dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (what Westen calls the "blue brain"), while Republicans have been winning more elections because they target the emotional ventromedial cortex (the "red brain"). DNC chair Howard Dean was so taken with Westen's brand of neuropolitics that he promised, "In 2008 we will win the presidency if our candidate reads and acts on this book."

By coincidence, I happened to listen to Diane Rehm on Monday. She was interviewing linguist and cognitive scientist George Lakoff, who wrote the book The Political Mind: Why You Can't Understand 21st-Century American Politics with an 18th-Century Brain. In fact, at first I thought that this was the same book as the Wired book, but of course it is not.

The latter book deals more with neurolinguistic programming - i.e. managing peoples' perceptions to get them to do what you want them to do with words and phrases - on a massive scale, and in a political context. One of Lakoff's theses (I hate that word - it sounds like feces) was that the Republican party has been engaging in neurolinguistic programming to extraordinary effect for a long time now. One of his examples is the intentional, Republican-initiated migration of the word "Democratic party" to "Democrat party" - Republicans started using "Democrat party" in order to try to divorce the association of the ideal of democracy from the Democratic party. The interesting thing is, many Democrats have followed suit.  They don't even know they've been manipulated.

I remember another interview about how the administration hijacked the term "global warming" and turned it into the less incendiary "climate change." Now everyone seems to be using the phrase "climate change."

The Democratic Party: party of ideals.

The Republican Party: party of extraordinarily sophisticated perception management.

I disagree with Howard Dean. I think George Lakoff's book is the one that Democrats need to read and act upon.

Disclaimer: I haven't actually read either book yet. But I want to.